A Country at War
Vol. 57 No. 15 The Third Sunday in Lent March 8, 2026
Our country is at war—and as with all wars, there is no telling where that will take us. In the aftermath of “forever wars” in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is vigorous debate about its justification and its aims. Given the tribalized state of our politics, it will be a challenge for Americans to conduct that debate soberly and responsibly. I trust we will be earnest in our prayers for our country, for its leadership, for the public debate about the war, as well as for the armed forces, and that we will be praying for wisdom and courage and devotion to the common good. I trust we shall also not omit to pray for the non-combatant civilians caught in this conflict. As for the Iranian regime that has for decades proclaimed “Death to America” as a national goal, we may well pray for its defeat—but with the caveat made in the national anthem: “Then conquer we must / when our cause it is just”.
Insistent Prayer
We need to pray, and how shall we pray? By both example and exhortation, the Scriptures tell us to pray hard—as if your life depended on it (it does). Pray “without ceasing”, “continue instant in prayer”: that is, both persistently and insistently. Be earnest, urgent, importunate. Like the woman of Canaan in last Sunday’s gospel, who refused to be discouraged, and in the face of judgment clung to hope, We are to pray as Jacob prayed: “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me.”
Earnest supplication of this kind is precisely what the service known as the Litany teaches us, if we are willing to learn. It is not merely intercession, but intercession shaped by urgency—prayer offered, as Thomas Secker, Archbishop of Canterbury (c.1768), described it, “for averting God’s judgments and procuring his mercy.” In time of war or calamity the character of the Litany comes to vivid life; but it is always seasonable; both because it encourages us to pray in solidarity with those who do suffer, and it is a reminder of our own vulnerability without which we fall into complacency.”
After the opening invocations of the whole Trinity, the rest of the prayer is addressed to Christ, and Christ in his humanity. F. D. Maurice (c.1848) comments on its profoundly human character: “What do you mean by saying it is human but this: That it calls upon the Son of God as one who has actually entered into the depths of human sorrow; who has borne the agony and bloody sweat, the cross and passion, who has been dead, and buried, and has known the darkness of the unseen world? What do you mean by calling it human but this: That it speaks of the actual vulgar sorrows to which flesh is heir; that it supposes men to be praying who know them for themselves and for others, who are too much crushed by them to have any power except to lift up such a cry as this, “Good Lord, deliver us,” “Lord, have mercy upon us”? It is in the press and tumult of life you learn the tones in which these prayers should be uttered; it is amidst the terrible realities of sickness and death, of conflict with flesh and blood and with principalities and powers that you are taught what kind of garlands, with what measures, you shall approach the divine altar.”
“Did you ever meet with words which expressed more distinctly, simply, passionately, the sense of that oppression and the hope of that refuge? From first to last the prayer supposes you to be surrounded with enemies; some visible, some invisible; both equally real; the secret pestilence no more than the drawn sword; the pride and malice and envy of our own hearts, no less than those of the persecutor and slanderer.”
Only a mediator who is one with God, and one with us in suffering the consequences of sin under the judgments and providence of God, can relieve our need and deliver us from misery. That’s why it is to him that we turn in earnest supplication.
The structure of the Litany follows the familiar Pauline triad of “guilt, grace, and gratitude”. After the Invocations of the Trinity,which teach us to ground our hope in God’s own mercy, in the Deprecations it turns to our great need and misery, both sin and suffering. Then, in the Obsecrations, it calls on the works of Christ as the basis of our deliverance. In the Intercessions it seeks the supply of every need, both outwardly in society and inwardly in our souls. In the concluding Supplications, our prayer becomes pure pleading both earnest and insistent. “I will not let thee go, except thou bless me”.